Once more we look at the Covid-19 outbreak in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia, and Illinois. And things are bad getting worse. I skipped last week because I was on holiday for Thanksgiving, but the data was perhaps not the most indicative of the current state of affairs at the time. But we now have a full week’s worth of data since the holiday, and like I said at the top, things are bad. Especially when we compare the charts below to where we were two weeks ago.
We look at new cases and we can see the impact of Thanksgiving on the shape of the curves. Note how in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and to a lesser extent Delaware, we see a sharp plateau with the average before a sudden resumption of positive results. That’s Thanksgiving for you. You can see a similar, though perhaps more pronounced pattern in Illinois and Virginia where both states actually saw their average rate of new cases per day fall over the holiday.
Illinois, however, had been trending downward before Thanksgiving, and it might be due in part to the lockdown imposed by the city of Chicago. Whilst unpopular, lockdowns are an effective way of tamping down rising rates of new cases—vital to maintain capacity at hospitals and intensive care units (ICUs).
Of course cities and states are slowly implementing their own new lockdowns now. Philadelphia has been in one for two weeks now. Of course, we would want to wait 2–4 weeks to see if the numbers of new cases begin to fall, but the big intervening factor here is that very same Thanksgiving holiday. Did people travel? Anecdotally, I can say that the rooftop deck of my building’s parking garage, which I can see from my flat, was empty but for about five cars including my own. So people definitely travelled and likely visited other households. Not great.
And that could set us back, because new cases lead to new hospitalisations lead to new deaths. I would say that we probably should not expect as many deaths as we saw in the spring, because we are no longer dealing with a new virus. We know how to treat it far more effectively. But we also see that people aren’t taking the most basic preventative measures: wear a mask, and stay isolated.
In Illinois we are seeing death rates in excess of what we saw in the spring. And Pennsylvania isn’t far behind what we saw in March and April.
And so I am increasingly worried that we will see more death in the winter than we did in the spring. And it’s depressing because so much of it could be avoided. Wearing a mask isn’t 100% effective. And there’s no guarantee that the few people an isolated household interact with, e.g. the delivery guy, aren’t themselves vectors. But both measures are far more effective than only occasionally wearing a mask at a house party to celebrate the holidays because we won’t let the virus beat us and interfere with our way of life.
The virus doesn’t care and you and I are tired of it. Tired of isolation. Of wearing masks. The virus is out there, spreading, and making people sick. And a fraction of those people are becoming ill enough to warrant hospitalisation. And a fraction of those are dying.
The next several weeks are going to be awful.
But you know that now. And you can brace yourself.
Credit for the graphics is mine.
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